Vegan Strawberry Banana Muffins

I’m back!!! I missed you all so much!!! It’s been a crazy month of traveling, receiving house guests, spending time with relatives visiting from other countries, studying for exams, etc. I am so glad to be back to recipe testing and blogging. I missed having this creative outlet every day, missed the sense of community with my readers, missed the satisfaction of putting out a product that I can be proud of.

Last time I posted, it was to finish up the #OSG Cookbook Challenge, where I cooked every single recipe from the Oh She Glows cookbook over the course of a few months. With that completed, I promised to come back with a new challenge, and I thought I would come up with something easily since I pretty much eat, breath, and sleep food. Funnily enough though, I was stumped for the longest time! I still am to be honest. I’ve decided to go with a fairly open, flexible, simple challenge. One that I can change up week to week according to my mood and the weather. Cuz these days it’s often way to hot to cook! No-bake desserts anyone? The challenge is as follows: Develop a new and original recipe for 1 main course, 1 dessert, and 1 snack per week. I figured this will help me work towards my larger goal of some day publishing a cookbook. Plus it will get me out of my rut of eating the same old things all the time 🙂

So to kick things off, I’m starting with a snack recipe. I rarely make snacks, so I think this will be the biggest challenge for me to come up with new material on every week. I’m aiming to make healthy, easy, straight-forward snack recipes that can be whipped up in a crazy snack-attack fit of hunger. Or as we say in my house, when you are feeling HANGRY! These muffins came to be when I got home from a week away to find a bunch of sad looking bananas and strawberries about to perish in my kitchen. I rescued them with these muffins and was so pleased with the results. Moist, fluffy, fruity, and summery, I think these are my new favorite banana muffin! And if you know me, you’ll know I love to test out new banana bread recipes! I based these loosely off a recipe for banana bran muffins on Allrecipes.com. You can usually turn any baking recipe vegan with the following subs:

Coconut oil, margarine, or canola oil instead of butter

Almond or soy milk instead of regular milk

1 tbsp flax + 3 tbsp water instead of 2 eggs

Ingredients

1 tbsp ground flax seed

1/2 cup strawberries, chopped or sliced

1 1/2 cups plus 1 tbsp all-purpose flour

1/2 cup wheat bran

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

4 bananas, mashed

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup cane sugar

1/4 cup almond milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375. In a small bowl, mix the flax seed with 3 tbsp water. Set aside.

In a separate, medium bowl, mash the bananas and then add the oil, sugar, milk, vanilla, and reserved flax mixture. Whisk to combine, then pour over the flour mixture. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry until half mixed.

Gently fold the strawberries into the batter until there are no streaks of flour left. To get really fluffy muffins, mix the batter as little as possible. Sometimes I just leave a few mini streaks of flour and they turn out great.

Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners (I use unbleached ones). Fill each muffin cup a little more than 3/4 of the way. Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the largest muffin comes out clean. Let cool on a wire cooling rack at least 10 minutes before eating. I know, the wait is hard!